The Home Altar

This spring and early summer, I stumbled into a mystery on the back porch. Once the seat covers had been removed and the cushions put on the porch sofa, each morning I found scraps of grass and sticks scattered on one side. They looked like nest building materials, but there was no rhyme or reason to the way they were scattered about. This began the hilarious game of, go outside to greet the sunrise, go to the garage, get a bin, gather up the yard waste from the sofa, and put it in the bin. This continued for weeks.

Finally, as she grew more brazen, I encountered the culprit. A robin was flying up to the porch, clutching the materials in her beak, and attempting to land on a small metal cover for a kitchen vent on the back of the house. St. Clare House is intended to be a house of hospitality, but this was definitely a new twist to our mission! The slope of the metal cover meant the the materials simply slid off and collected on the sofa.

I continued the back and forth game of her decorating the porch and me cleaning it up. She brought increasing amounts of material and I kept composting them. Our relationship had reached a perfect state of cyclical dysfunction. Something needed to change. In my work as a chaplain to the unhoused community of Vermont, I have become keenly sensitive to the injustice of hostile architecture, the kinds of bars that make it impossible to sleep on a bench, spikes that make alcoves an impossible place to lay down, and rough rubble that turns outdoor gathering spaces into a dangerous rocky landscape. It was hard to imagine what I was about to do, adding a piece of hostile architecture to the house of hospitality and place I call home.

A single set of non-lethal bird spikes installed over the vent set a boundary that I prayed would send the right message, I want to honor your goal, but you’ve picked an unworkable spot. Your goal is beautiful and good, but this particular pathway just won’t get you there.

The spikes immediately ended the game of gathering and then composting the weeds and grasses. That was when something beautiful happened. The robin and her mate found the hanging basket on the front porch. It was stable, safe, and big enough to hold their materials. Before long, it was home to a perfect nest, a feat of creativity from my avian sibling. Shortly after the nest appeared, so did the gorgeous beautiful blue hue that announced life was on the way.

We had to be extra cautious, as both robins were keen to protect their heritage from interlopers, but with fierce gentleness, we were able to capture some images that showed what setting a boundary had done. Something impossible became possible when the location and means shifted. The experience flew by in a matter of weeks. Eggs became hatchlings who more resemble their dinosaur ancestors than birds.

These fragile creatures needed the safety of the nest just to survive, and that nest needed to be somewhere that predators would not reach easily. The siblings rapidly transformed into chicks, feathering out and becoming more avian daily.

Until one day, the parents stopped defending the nest and we found it totally empty. The little ones had headed out into the world and were seeking out their own adventures. It seemed as though the whole affair had come to a close. That was until I spotted a strange little bird in the gardens while walking the dog. After looking more closely, I realized it was one of the trio, getting ready to praise God by being a bird and singing the song of their people.

On the one hand, there wasn’t anything I did to help launch this new family of creatures. On the other hand, in recognizing the unworkable plan that the robin had hatched, I was able to encourage a change that meant her little ones actually would hatch! This whole episode was a powerful reminder for me that setting boundaries can be a life-giving “no” instead of a life-diminishing “no”. Sometimes, the work I do with humans looks like this too, helping people to articulate a life-giving “no”, because a beautiful idea needs to be done in a new place, in a new way, or under different circumstances that can actually support the change and growth that they are longing for. I’m grateful to have had this experience and to be able to explore the wisdom it held.

Practice

What about you?

• Is there a life-giving no that you need to give in order to help someone you care about?
• Is there a life-giving no that you need to hear so a dream of yours can actually take root?
• What gets in the way of setting or receiving boundaries that can be a life-giving no?

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef

After all that work; building, cutting, measuring, maneuvering, digging and setting a new home for the plants we’ve been cultivating; it leads to this. An empty space, a void, a hole in the ground, and a deep sense of sadness and loss just as the evidence of fruit was showing. Why this unhappy outcome and this gnarly finish to years of pruning, supporting and caring?

A fungus colloquially called orange bramble rust that infects wild brambles, blackberries, and black raspberries had appeared. The infection is systemic, meaning it makes the current growth sick, infects the crown and the roots, Every new growth would become weaker, sicker, and less fruitful. Worse yet, the spores contained in the waxy pustules on the leaves could spread the infection to other healthy plants. There was no way to prune or treat the plant in a manner that would restore healthy functioning. A slow and miserable withering and the loss of capacity to bear fruit was all we could look forward to.

This meant that I had to go against every gardening instinct in my body, to destroy what was not yet ripe and the bring this beautiful plant that had fed us to an end. It was the only way to try and preserve the remaining bushes.

The process was painstaking, because I wanted to minimize the spread of spores. So I dismantled the plant by hand, branch by branch with pruning shears and heavy trash bags to seal up the infected remains. I cannot compost, burn, or shred these without a risk of bringing the fungus to other plants.

After cutting away everything, I had the challenging task of digging up the crown and trying to pull as many roots out of the ground as possible, knowing that any new growth from a remnant of this plant would still be infected. The solemn proceeding of this experience was filled with so many feelings. Grief, disappointment, anger, relief, sorrow all came calling until the last of the roots were bagged and sealed up.

In this moment, I realized that so much of my work and ministry happens in deep tension with systemic factors that keep bringing the social illness and harm back to life, over and over. I am aware of my own laden feelings, and the voices inside me pleading to rescue even a part of this magnificent structure we have cultivated. They cry out “Let’s just cut away the parts that are sick! What if we save the parts that don’t look too bad? Couldn’t we wait until we receive the benefit of all these berries? So much love, attention, care, and cost has been sunk into this structure, surely we can save the system by a little light pruning and some fungicide spray!”

While not so horticultural in nature, are these not the very voices that have the power to stay the hand of even those of us who are desperate to alleviate pain and to make things better for our neighbors who are withering under systemic oppression? The desire to save, to preserve, to get one more thing out of the whole sick bramble, it not only deludes us into putting the shears away, but it creates the illusion that maybe it will be okay somehow. The same forces that paralyze our bodies and our action also numb and dissociate our deep feelings of loss and grief as we try to prepare for something new. Even as the evidence, says that to have a chance for life, radical change is necessary, I can feel the temptation to tinkering around the edges. When advocates speak of dismantling white supremacy or structural poverty or patriarchy, it looks more like taking down the bramble then some sort of stochastic revolutionary implosion. When the whole system is sick, the whole system needs to go, and we will need deep forbearance and love to journey through the empty space before something new emerges.

This meant it was important to not only do the deed, and to do it with great care, but to do it completely, and to give myself permission to feel all of those feelings as I worked. Snip, snip, snip. Spraying the neighboring plants. Digging and pulling and chopping. Bagging and sealing and mourning. Making the ground ready. Ready for rest and rejuvenation, and for cleansing. Ready to receive new life, something that is not susceptible to this blight, perhaps a beautiful red raspberry that will take years to nurture into the same stature and magnificence.

For now, I will sit with the empty space, grieve, and give thanks for the past fruits and especially for the courage to act. The Holy One will dwell in that emptiness right alongside me, all around me, deep within me, and in that hole, ensuring that it is not a grave, but rather a furrow.

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef

The places we live have plenty of locations for special purposes; rooms to prepare meals and store food, rooms for breaking bread, rooms for cleaning and caring for our bodies, rooms for rest, rooms for work, rooms for play, and rooms for putting things away until they’re needed. When an activity has a space, wh